Blackbaud’s Education Management Solutions: What’s New For February 28, 2023
Published
Here are all of the latest changes, updates, and new features for the Education management products for February 28, 2023.
| K-12 Community Blog Make sure to read up on all the new blog posts in the community, right here. |
Academics
Coming soon: New academic profiles
We plan to roll out a new version of Academic Profiles to all schools starting in the first quarter of 2023.Just like the old Academic Profile, the new 360 Profile displays when you select a student or alumnus via the People finder in Academics. The new profile contains the same features and capabilities as the older Academic Profile (plus a few new tools that we’ll show off in the Community post linked below), but arranged under new tab headings in a more accessible format. Depending on your role at the school, some or all of the following profile areas will be available to you.
To see screenshots of the upcoming 360 Profile and an explanation of the new features, check out the announcement in the K-12 Education Solutions Community.
Billing management (Early Adopter Program)
Disable payer self-enrollment for Auto-Pay
We’ve added a new option under Auto-Pay configuration settings, Allow payers to self-enroll in auto-pay. When enabled, payers can enroll themselves in Auto-Pay. When disabled, only Billing clerks can enroll payers in Auto-Pay.Communicate the total past due amount in past due notifications
Past due reminders to payers can now be customized to communicate the total amount past due within the notification method using the new Past due amount merge field. The Past due amount communicated is the total past due as of the date the notification is sent.Core
October 3, 2023 – Blackbaud ID requires Multi-factor Authentication
| Tip: Please join our webinar with product manager Jessica W. on Tuesday February 28 at 11am EST. |
The requirement will be enforced in “waves.” The first wave of schools will require MFA as of October 3, 2023. If, by this summer, your organization has not yet established an SSO connection, then we will send you an email with the exact date on which your users will be required to use MFA.
Exemptions
The following users are exempt from Blackbaud’s MFA requirement for BBID and their login experiences will not be affected:
- Users who login with a single sign on (SSO),
- Users who login with Sign in with Google,
- Users who login with Sign in with Apple,
- Students, alumni, parents, and non-administrative users of Blackbaud Education Management. These users have only Constituent or Other role types.
Multi-factor authentication (MFA) requires a user to successfully validate at least two of three factors to authenticate before gaining access to your solution and data. Blackbaud ID will require MFA using your password (what you use today) and a unique, time-based, one-time code accessed on a secondary device. We are proactively making this change, following industry-standard security measures, to help protect your organization and your data.
Try MFA early
We recommend testing MFA with a cloned role at your school’s convenience. For example, require users who have the nurse role to login with MFA and BBID. The nurse could complete the login using a numeric code sent to their phone for additional security.
As a platform manager, go to Core, Security, Roles, and search for a role. On the role’s row, select more (…) and then select to Enforce MFA.
Platform managers can also Remove MFA enforcement from here (during your testing phase). When you disable the MFA requirement for a role, users in the affected roles may still be prompted to login with MFA. However, after logging in, the user can go to their individual BBID profile to opt out of MFA.
When MFA is required for a school role, those users can view their BBID profile, but can’t opt out of MFA.
Encourage your users to act now by enabling MFA on their Blackbaud ID if they have not already done so.
Miscellaneous
Please note:
- Users who login with single sign on (SSO), Sign in with Google, or Sign in with Apple, will not be prompted to use Blackbaud’s MFA, even if the school enforces MFA for one of their roles.
- Users who use Sign in with Google or Sign in with Apple may be prompted to use an MFA that is managed by Google or Apple, even when Blackbaud doesn’t require MFA. These “social sign ins” are subject to the third party’s authentication processes, instead of Blackbaud’s process.
- Users who are already required to use MFA because they also use their BBID for other Blackbaud applications, such as Raiser’s Edge NXT, will still require MFA, regardless of their MFA settings for their roles in Education Management.
Please contact Support or your Customer Success Manager with any questions.
Extracurricular
Athletics – Manage team schedules
Athletic Group Managers can now oversee individual team schedules in a calendar or list view. To access team schedules from Extracurricular, select Athletics > Athletics setup > [team name] > Schedule.Managers can add, reschedule, cancel, and delete games, as well as add, cancel, and delete single practices. Select Directions and Details for an event to view more information, including the Location address, driving Directions, Transportation and Dismissal details, and Additional notes.
Financial Aid management
Updated parent message when application payment fails
If an application payment fails, parents now receive the following message with additional details and instructions:The application payment has not been processed, please ensure all payment information entered is correct. If you see multiple charges on your bank statement please be advised only the successful payment will be debited and the rest will be removed.
The previous message only stated that an error occurred while submitting the application.
Parents logged out when accessing the same application in multiple browser tabs
Parents can access applications for different years in multiple browser tabs, but they cannot open the same application for a single year in multiple browser tabs. Parents who attempt to open the same application in multiple browser tabs will be logged out of the Financial Aid Parent site.Tuition management
On Hold payments included in Estimated Remittance and Billed And Paid reports
The balances and totals in the Estimated Remittance and Billed And Paid reports now include On Hold payments undergoing NACHA validation.On Hold payments included in Buy Now Give Now Item Details report
The Buy Now Give Now Item Details report now returns results when the selected billing item is associated with an On Hold payment.API and Integrations
OneRoster
New
OneRoster data exports now produce a demographics.csv file, populated with data corresponding to the properties returned in the response from GET Demographics all. Demographics.csv contains demographic information about students, including their name, gender, date of birth, race, ethnicity, and other related personal information.To take full advantage of the gender and ethnicity-related fields featured in demographics.csv, schools must leverage the Integration mappings settings page found in Education management > Core > Settings > Integration mapping. Unmapped fields result in cells with a value of FALSE.
To produce a OneRoster data export featuring the new demographics.csv, navigate to Core > System tools > OneRoster export > and select Create report.
Changed
We’ve updated two .csv files produced by the OneRoster data export process, orgs.csv and users.csv. Orgs.csv now more closely reflects the response from GET Orgs all and users.csv now more closely reflects the response from GET Users all. Specifically, both orgs.csv and users.csv now feature columns corresponding to the metadata object returned by both endpoints.
Orgs.csv now contains the following new columns:
- metadata.address1
- metadata.address2
- metadata.address3
- metadata.city
- metadata.state
- metadata.postCode
- Metadata.gradeRange
Users.csv now contains the following new columns:
- metadata.grade
- metadata.stateId
- metadata.address1
- metadata.address2
- metadata.address3
- metadata.city
- metadata.state
- metadata.postCode
School API
ChangedWe’ve updated the endpoints POST Athletics game create and PATCH Athletics game update to support setting the time athletic events should end by including game_end in the request body. game_end is a datetime field that uses the ISO-8601 format (e.g., 2022-01-20T16:30:00-05:00).
We’ve removed reference to the links object in the documentation for POST Users Address create and POST Users Phone Create.
School API and OneRoster API
For information about recently added endpoints and other updates, view the School API and OneRoster API changelog.Subscribe to “What’s New”
To receive email notifications when the What’s new update appears, make sure to subscribe to the K12 community’s blog by logging into the community site and selecting the Subscribe button.To manage your community subscriptions:
- Log into the community and locate your name and profile picture in the upper right corner.
- Select the drop-down arrow and select My Account.
- From the My Account page, select the Subscriptions tab and scroll down to the Blogs section.
- Locate Blackbaud K-12 Education solutions Blog. If you want to be notified as soon as the What’s new content goes live on the community, select the Instant option. You can also opt for Daily and Weekly notifications.
- Scroll to the end of the page and select Save changes.
What’s Recent
Missed any of our weekly releases? You can catch up on everything in our Month in Review blog posts, which cover every feature and update Education management releases each month.
News Blackbaud K-12 Solutions™ Blog
02/27/2023 12:19pm EST
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